Free Math Books

Byrne's version of the first six books of Euclid's Elements was first published in 1847. His version is famous for its innovative use of colors and graphics to explain Euclid's propositions. Most of the words are replaced by colorful diagrams, keeping the number of words to a minimum. This book is an important example of a work that uses visual methods to illustrate mathematical concepts.

This book has an interesting series formula that can be used to find the the smallest absolute root of a polynomial equation. The formula is on page 120 and it was discovered by Whittaker (one of the authors of this book). I used this formula in some of my papers.

This book is very similar to Euclid's Elements. The most interesting thing about this book is that it describes the Carlyle circle method for finding the roots of quadratic equations (only real roots). The method is described starting with the page 176. The Carlyle cirle is related to Lill's method.

The book was published in 1894. Florian Cajori was a well know math historian at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1918 he was appointed to the first history of mathematics chair in US (at the University of California, Berkeley).

This is another book by Florian Cajori, published in 1928. The topic of the book may seem boring, but the evolution of mathmatical notation is an important subject. The best example that proves the importance of mathematical notation is when we compare the Hindu-Arabic numerals to the previous number representations. Mathematics becomes much easier when we use symbols that represent mathematical concepts in a convenient manner. The book is divided in 2 volumes.

The book was published in 1888. This book can complement the books written by Cajori. An interesting fact is that both Cambridge and Oxford have a chair in the Mathematics Department called "Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics".